Terms and conditions

Who we are

FreeSiteCrew designs and builds websites for small businesses. In these terms, “we” and “us” mean FreeSiteCrew, and “you” means the business or person we are building a website for.

These terms apply from the moment you submit an application. You can reach us about any of it at [email protected].

What we do

We design and build your website at no charge. There is no build fee and no design fee. A designer plans and builds the site around your business, you see it before it goes live, and you tell us what you want changed.

We review every application and we do not accept all of them. If we cannot help, we will say so and that is the end of it, with nothing owed either way.

What you pay

Once your site is live, it costs £15 a month to keep it running. That covers hosting, security, backups, an SSL certificate and support. We are not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add. £15 is the whole amount.

There is no minimum term and no contract length. You pay for a month at a time, in advance, and you can stop whenever you like.

The price will not change during any month you have already paid for. If we ever change it, we will tell you at least 30 days beforehand and you are free to leave rather than accept it.

Your domain name is separate and is not included. Domains are registered in your name and renewed by you, usually once a year. We will help you set this up and tell you what it costs before you commit to anything.

When payment starts

Payment starts when your website goes live, and not before. There is no trial period to forget about and nothing begins automatically while the site is still being built.

You see the finished site first. If you do not want it, you do not pay, and we will not have taken anything from you in the meantime. The design and build were free whether or not you go ahead.

Your right to cancel

Because you are agreeing to this at a distance rather than in person, consumer law gives you 14 days to change your mind. That period runs from the day your site goes live and the monthly payment begins.

Cancel within those 14 days and we will refund what you have paid, in full, with no questions. Email us and it is done.

This right applies to consumers. If you are contracting as a business it may not apply, but we will honour it anyway, because we would rather you left happy than felt trapped.

Cancelling later

After the first 14 days you can still cancel at any time, with no fee and no notice period. Email us or cancel from your account in the client area.

Your site stays live until the end of the month you have paid for. We do not refund part months after the cooling off period, because the service was provided for that month.

What you own

This is the part most worth reading, because it is where we differ from most of the free website offers you will find.

• Your domain is yours. It is registered in your name, at a registrar you control, and it stays yours whatever happens between us.
• Your content is yours. The words, the photographs and anything else you gave us. We claim no ownership of it.
• The finished website is yours. If you leave, ask and we will give you the files. You are free to take the site elsewhere and host it somewhere else.
• We will not hold your site hostage. Cancelling means the hosting stops, not that your work disappears.

We ask one thing in return: please do not resell the site as your own work, or pass the design to another agency as a template. It was built for your business.

We may show your finished site as an example of our work, with your business name. If you would rather we did not, tell us and we will not.

What we need from you

We cannot build a site out of nothing, and the thing that most often delays a launch is waiting on content.

• A clear idea of what your business does, who it is for, and what you want visitors to do.
• Any photographs, logos or wording you want used, and the right to use them. If you send us an image you do not own the rights to, we have to take it down.
• Answers within a reasonable time when we ask you something.
• Accurate information. We build on what you tell us, so if it is wrong the site will be too.

If we hear nothing from you for 60 days while a build is in progress, we may pause it and get on with other work. Come back whenever you are ready and we will pick it up again.

What hosting includes

• Hosting on managed servers, set up and looked after by us.
• An SSL certificate, so your site loads securely and shows the padlock.
• Regular backups.
• Security updates and monitoring.
• Small content changes: prices, opening hours, a new photograph, a paragraph reworded. Send them over and we will do them.
• Support by email, answered by the people who built the site.

What it does not include

So there are no surprises, these are separate and we will always quote before doing any of them:

• Your domain name registration and renewal.
• A redesign, or new pages and sections beyond small changes.
• Branding and logo design, which we offer for a small one-off fee.
• Online shops, booking systems, memberships and similar, where the work goes well past a brochure site.
• Advertising, search marketing and anything else that brings people to the site.
• Third party services you choose to use, such as a booking tool or a mailing list.

Availability

We aim to keep your site online at all times and we host on infrastructure built for that. We cannot promise it will never be unavailable. Servers fail, networks break, and occasionally maintenance is necessary. We will keep any planned work short and out of business hours where we can.

We cannot promise any particular position in search results, any amount of traffic, or any number of enquiries. Anyone who does promise that is guessing. We build the site properly so it can be found, and the rest depends on your market, your competitors and time.

Acceptable use

We will not host anything unlawful, and we reserve the right to decline or remove content that is. That includes material that infringes someone else’s copyright, is defamatory, harasses people, or is used to deceive or defraud.

You are responsible for what appears on your site, including anything you add or ask us to add.

If we end the agreement

We can end this agreement by giving you 30 days notice, and we would refund any part month you had paid for. We would also give you your site files so you can move it elsewhere. We do not expect to do this, and we would tell you why.

We may suspend a site immediately, without notice, if it breaks the acceptable use section above or if payment fails and stays unpaid after we have asked. We will always contact you first where we reasonably can.

If payment fails we will try again and let you know. Your site is not taken down the same day. We will give you a fair chance to sort it out.

Our liability

We take responsibility for our own work. If we get something wrong, tell us and we will put it right.

We are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, or losses we could not reasonably have expected when we started working together. Where we are liable, our liability is limited to the amount you have paid us in the previous 12 months.

Nothing here limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected by anything on this page.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects you, we will tell you at least 30 days beforehand and you can leave rather than accept it. The date at the top of this page always shows when it last changed.

Law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.

If something goes wrong, please tell us first at [email protected]. Most problems are a misunderstanding and we would far rather fix it than argue about it.

For anything about your personal information, see our privacy policy. For what this site stores on your device, see the cookie policy.